


love is not a symptom of time

by loudamy



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, I now measure time by b99, just fluff, no covid-19 in here ladies & gentlemen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:29:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23416759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loudamy/pseuds/loudamy
Summary: Jake, and Amy, and the first twelve weeks of their pregnancy. First scan, pre-7x10.
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 22
Kudos: 103





	love is not a symptom of time

**Author's Note:**

> [charles boyle voice] I once stayed in my house for 3-and-a-half-months straight
> 
> title from joanna newsom's 'time, as a symptom'. again thank u to alys & emma for insp!!!!

The first twelve weeks are a delirious web of heaven and hell.

Jake gets home from work on Amy’s day off to find her surrounded by all the baby clothes and bedding they’ve each surreptitiously bought, freshly laundered and clearly undergoing a systematic folding and organising process.

Amy’s sitting cross-legged in the centre of it all, like a slightly droopy, but beautiful, flower, mid-fold of a warm yellow blanket. It’s soft and thick, and Jake hasn’t been able stop envisaging their baby swaddled inside it, little fists star-fishing at Amy’s hair.

She wordlessly holds up the matching t-shirts he bought last week, his adorned with a pizza with a slice missing and a paired tiny t-shirt patterned with the missing slice. Jake shrugs off his messenger bag and grins and Amy laughs and his heart flutters in his chest because ringing in his ears is ‘you’re my dream girl’ and she is, she is.

Little things make Jake smile, like the binder besides Amy’s bedside table getting fatter (painstakingly labelled ‘admin’ just in case Charles decides to drop in on them unexpectedly - Amy’s still embarrassed about what he saw in her bedside drawer last time) with every passing day…

…and coming into the kitchen every morning to trial baby names with the fridge magnets (so far, Amy’s got three of hers onto the ‘yes’ list and Jake two) …

…and the way Amy’s hand freely rests against her stomach in the evenings when they collapse into a pile of tangled limbs on their new couch.

Quiet moments with Amy have always been Jake’s favourite thing in the world, the kind of hours he wants to frame and silently revere, but these nights just hanging out with the love of his life and their baby are infinitely precious like nothing he’s experienced before. He knows Amy’s feeling it too, because when he lets his own hand languidly doze on top of her own, she shifts and smiles at him, sleepy and warm, their own little promise.

‘Love you,’ he mouths, eyes flickering between Amy and their bump. He takes a picture of her when she falls asleep before him - a common occurrence nowadays - the sweet swell of their baby is just visible under the blanket - and in days to come he’ll pull it out whenever he wants to feel home.

When Amy hits her five week mark - according to her very granular conception calculations - Jake wakes up to the sound of her feeble coughing, but that’s okay, because Amy’s been letting him practice French braids on her so he can do it for their baby someday - and side-note, Jake’s discovered over their four years together that braiding Amy’s hair for her is a considerable Santiago de-stressor.

‘This is disgusting,’ Amy murmurs, eyes at half-mast.

‘It’s the miracle of life!’ Jake reminds her, and receives a shower douche in his face seconds later.

But Amy’s hair is always in slightly askew braids when she leans over the toilet, and she never has to wait long before Jake is beside her, rubbing her lower back, offering her sips of water, kissing away the bad taste and any residual morning grumpiness.

She doesn’t really mind, she’ll tell him later. Not when it means their baby is making itself at home in her body, not when she gets a baby that’s half him, half her, at the end of it. It draws that smile out of him: the one that radiates love, the soft supernova eyes.

It’s hell when he wants to show Boyle the new stupid dad shoes he’s bought or text Gina and ask about playdates with Iggy. He’s glad for his vaguely childish reputation when Terry catches him looking up giant toys that would still fit in his and Amy’s big-but-not-gigantic Brooklyn apartment.

He migrates to Amy’s side as soon as she hangs up the phone with her mother and heaves a measured sigh from the strain of keeping their secret, already poised to massage the traction from her shoulders.

But inside every one of those moments is the infinite joy that is their impending little bundle of love.

It’s Amy stretching to reach something from their top cupboards - _not_ a recipe book, he prays - the little expanse of skin there, the baby curve of her stomach. Seeing Amy’s skin always immobilises him immediately, that’s nothing new, but it’s different now she’s growing their baby.

‘Stop staring at my bump and help me,’ she pouts, and Jake does, but he still takes a minute to press his face to the warm, exposed skin and blows a raspberry and a kiss in succession which makes Amy laugh and squirm and drag him up to take his mouth, and he’s sure their baby is sickened by how stupidly in love his or her parents are.

x

Then the day comes. He’d love to say it begins with them wrapped peacefully in one another’s arms, naturally awakened by the dewy morning light.

Instead Amy’s alarm clock starts yapping at six a.m., and she’s lying half on top of him, mouth barely ajar, with a spray of drool pooling onto his t-shirt. She lets out a string of Spanish curse words and grips onto his chest stubbornly when he gives signs of moving.

Jake chuckles. ‘Babe, have you forgotten what today is?’

‘Jake, shhh,’ Amy burrows deeper into his side. ‘It’ll go off again in three minutes. That’s a whole three minutes before I have to throw up.’

‘Ames, wake up. It’s scan day.’ Jake breathes into her ear.

She twitches, then one eye snaps open. Then the other. Jake slides down so that his head is back on the pillow and the grin stretching across his face is inches from hers.

‘We’re meeting our baby today?’ she says, sleepily, to which Jake nods happily; moments later she’s hurled them both out of bed and he’s in her arms where he belongs.

Sadly, the celebration is cut short by Amy hurtling into the bathroom to throw up. But it doesn’t matter, because when she’s washed and dressed and pads into the kitchen Jake is standing proudly by their refrigerator, pointing to the messy tapestry of magnets and post-it notes.

Two in particular: today’s date, and ‘Twelve week scan!’ is inked in Amy’s perfect cursive, punctuated with a tiny heart. Underneath, Jake’s doodled a very tiny sonogram, scrawled ‘I love you both’ and underlined it four times.

‘So, you’re going to tell everyone that you’re interviewing suspects for the Ambrose murder.’ Amy says as she simultaneously takes her folic acid and stuffs a packet of tissues and three water bottles into her handbag.

‘And you’re at a seminar for how to properly sanitise your hands.’ Jake nods. ‘I love it when we work as a team. We’re going to be the best parents.’

Amy smiles back, but there’s a tension in her movements that he’s all too familiar with.

‘Hey, what is it? Are you nervous? I know living a double life for the last twelve weeks hasn’t been easy, but Hannah Montana managed it for five years.’

‘It’s not that.’ Amy swallows and looks down momentarily; Jake takes her hand and squeezes reassuringly. When she meets his gaze again, her eyes are rich and dark with worry. ‘I just want everything to be okay. With the baby.’

Jake understands. He won’t forget the way her mouth caved, and her throat twitched, every time the pregnancy test came back negative. He won’t forget the nights she fell asleep with her face stiffly buried in his neck and the dampness there, holding her between his heart and his promise to look after her, for hours after she was lost in dreams, wishing away her pain.

‘I know, honey. Me too. But no matter what, we’ll be okay. You and me. And hey, I’m as confident as I can be…that our little one will be okay too.’

Amy wraps her arms around his neck and inhales, mumbling something that sounds like ‘I love you’ into his skin. Jake thinks about his wife in his arms and how he can’t refuse her anything, but that he’d do anything to tell her with certainty that everything will be okay. And it’s killing him that he can’t.

x

More than anything, Jake is wishing that Amy still worked from the desk opposite his. Of course he misses her smiling at him over her monitor or perching on the edge of his desk to discuss a case, but today his leg is jiggling with anticipation and he really needs her to calm him down.

Only, she’s probably not faring that much better on her own floor. He’s mid-text ( _hey, I love you, meet you outside the precinct in an hour, cant wait)_ when Rosa pauses by his desk to drop off some phone records and eyes his leg.

‘You okay, man? Did you take one of Scully’s diet pills by accident again? Those things are pure caffeine.’

‘Huh? Yeah, oh yeah, I’m fine.’ Jake places a steely hand on his leg. ‘Just thinking really hard about the Ambrose murder. I think the sister did it.’

‘She has an alibi.’ Rosa cocks an eyebrow. ‘You spent all of yesterday trying to convince me she couldn’t have done it.’

‘Did I? Oop, well, changed my mind.’ says Jake, aware his grin is now verging on maniacal. ‘Thanks for the phone records.’

Rosa eyes him, grimaces, and obviously decides it’s not worth her time questioning him any further, because she stalks back to her desk and starts in on Hitchcock for leaving his hair-growth pills on it. For once, Jake is glad for her aversion to sharing details of their personal lives.

He stares back at his screen and tries to focus on the Ambrose murder. The boyfriend’s motive is tenuous, but it’s the best lead they have right now. He needs to follow up on the bloody jacket lead. Amy is currently one floor away from him. Amy is pregnant. Amy is pregnant and one floor away from him. Maybe the mother is only backing up the sister’s alibi because she’s financially dependent on her. Maybe Amy’s already found the ‘your boobs are the best, love your husband’ note he slipped in her bag this morning. He’s made sure to give them extra love since Amy got pregnant and has been feeling a little self-conscious about her body. Who murdered Ambrose?

He shakes his head and pulls out his phone, ready to text Amy and see if she’s as distracted as he is, but there’s already a message from her on his screen.

**11:43**

**From: My Wife <3**

_Shall we just leave now? I’m too restless to get any work done._

He doesn’t reply, just grabs his jacket, gestures wildly to Holt through the glass, nods at Rosa and makes a dash for the elevator before Charles can waylay him.

When he gets to Amy’s floor, she’s drumming her fingers manically against a desk and half-engaged in conversation with Gary, who is babbling away at a break-neck pace.

Upon spotting Jake, her face lights up; his heart backflips, but when she tries to interrupt her very zealous rookie, it’s no avail.

‘Hey, Gary, do you mind if I borrow my wife? We’re taking an extended lunch break. Seminars, interrogations, all that stuff.’

‘Oh sure!’ Gary beams. ‘Hey, Sergeant, I’ll just email you the rest of my follow-up questions. It might be a few separate emails, I have quite a lot. Maybe we could video-call tonight and I could go through the rest of them with y-’

‘Yeah, sure, Gary, that’s great.’ Amy says absently, snatching up her own jacket and handbag.

‘Did you just agree to let Gary Skype you?’ Jake tries to hide his smirk as she ushers him towards the elevator.

‘Probably,’ Amy shakes her head and sighs, ‘I haven’t been able to concentrate all morning. I misplaced an apostrophe in an arrest report earlier. An _apostrophe,_ Jake. That’s the most fundamental type of punctuation there is!’

‘Definitely my baby,’ says Jake, flippantly, but she captures his hand and clenches and he knows she’s feeling anxious right now, so he fiddles idly with her wedding rings like she loves and asks for her advice on the Ambrose case, which she also loves.

‘I’m still thirsty,’ Amy says, suddenly. ‘I haven’t had enough water.’

Amy’s been drinking water all day; Jake, out of solidarity, has made a valiant effort to do the same. He’s been to the bathroom in the last few hours more than, perhaps, in the last few years of his life.

‘Here.’ he tosses her his own, half-filled bottle. ‘So, how are we feeling?’

‘Excited.’ Amy confesses, through sips. ‘Nervous, naturally, but to be honest? More just really, really excited.’

‘Yep!’ Jake exclaims. ‘About to meet Gizmo for the first time.’

‘Nope.’

‘Alright, that one was fair. What about Raphael?’

‘We agreed no ninja turtles names.’

‘So Die Hard names are not off limits?’

x

Jake hates hospitals. In his defence, they’re not exactly the cornerstone of happy occasions. But, as Amy reminds him, his goddaughter Ava was born at this very one, and he still remembers Sharon’s tired but elated face, and holding the snuffling newborn and thinking of Amy, and _maybe_ , some long-ago wonder that somehow he once forgot.

He holds Amy’s hand all the way from the car to the waiting room, and every second in between. He tells her about the baby Björn he wants to order, except he hasn’t decided if the shark one or the pineapple one is cooler and either way he can’t wait to visit her at the precinct on his days off with their baby waving from his chest before they all go to lunch as a family.

Amy drinks more water and tells him she wants to start taking cooking classes so that she doesn’t poison their child and that she doesn’t want David to babysit, ever, and that he’s made all of the difficult parts of the last twelve weeks easy.

It’s hard to hear the sonographer asking them to come in over his heart swelling and the look Amy’s giving him, but he leaps up and offers her his hand and revels in the knowledge that whatever happens they won’t be leaving this room as they found it.

x

The second Amy’s sequestered in the chair she reaches for Jake. It’s such a tender move, like she does in sleep or when he sits beside her, and it makes his eyes prick.

The sonographer asks Amy questions - questions she’s already prepped for, unsurprisingly, and it’s only when Amy lifts her blouse and lets the doctor press tissue paper against her trousers that she starts to falter a bit.

‘Hey, so what does the jelly stuff do?’ Jake asks, as Amy flinches at the cold substance being rubbed over her abdomen, and although he’s looking at the sonographer, it’s not her benefit he’s asking for.

Sure enough, Amy’s grip on his hand loosens when she answers. ‘The gel acts as a conductive medium to create a bond between the skin and the ultrasound transducer. The ultrasound waves don’t easily travel through air, so the gel prevents extra air between the probe and my skin. It makes the image clear.’ she hesitates and looks over at the older woman, eyes creased. ‘Right?’

The sonographer smiles indulgently. ‘Exactly right. I’m impressed.’

Amy’s smiling and successfully (partially) distracted, Jake’s fascinated - he half wants to touch the gel and half doesn’t, and now the sonographer is moving the transducer over the gel and there’s movement and squiggles on the screen, and Jake’s heartbeat is in his ears but he’s just focusing on Amy. Like he always does when he’s nervous.

Just focus on Amy.

‘You okay, babe?’ he asks, and she nods, eyes bright, and he rubs his thumb over her pulse point, soothing the thrum.

The longest moment of his life, and then -

‘Okay. Here’s your baby.’

Jake Peralta has been breathless precisely twice in his thirty-nine years. Firstly, the one and only time his dad took him to his swimming lesson and started flirting with the lifeguard while he was meant to be watching Jake hold his breath underwater. The second time was when he was watching Amy float down the aisle of their makeshift wedding, each step closer to becoming his wife.

But now, he’s watching the blurry outline of the baby - that he and Amy made together - beat against the screen. He’s seeing a little life in another colour and then he’s not, because his eyes are no longer prickling, they’re streaming, and his face is crumpling because it’s not a fever dream. He’s going to be a daddy to a little one he’s already vowing will be loved more than any other, simply because Jake Peralta will be his or her father.

He looks over at Amy, instinctively, and maybe it’s just the tears that are definitely spilling down his face, but her eyes are shining, really shining, and her smile is wide and trembling in a way he hasn’t seen since he asked her to marry him.

He hasn’t even realised how hard she’s squeezing his hand until this moment, but when she whispers ‘Jake,’ he’s shaking out of her grip so that she can lean up and pull him into her embrace, careful not to knock the sonographer’s hand.

‘Everything looks good,’ she’s saying, a million miles away. ‘That there is the head-’

Amy blows out a fairy breath.

‘And there’s your baby’s heart.’

‘Cool cool cool.’ Jake’s voice is choked.

Amy’s crying harder when he looks back to her, still lit up from the inside out.

She’s probably imagining what he’s imagining: wrinkly little wrists tucked into Amy’s chest, lullabies that may or may not be Taylor Swift-influenced, Die Hard re-enactments at bath-time, tickly bedtime kisses and Saturday mornings watching cartoons in bed. How was there a time he wasn’t sure that he wanted this?

‘I love you so much.’ she manages, and then he kisses her through the tears that neither of them have the presence of mind to blot away, and the sonographer is saying something about giving them a minute and the door’s closing behind her.

‘So…a lot of change around here, huh?’

x

Jake’s wallet is a scrappy old bit of leather. It’s usually stuffed with receipts that he’ll later throw away, much to the chagrin of his and Amy’s accountant, sweet wrappers, and a couple of dog-eared dollars.

He’s never had anything of much value in it; never really cared to, but suddenly it’s his most precious thing in the world. His entire life is alight in glorious black-and-white: Amy and their baby, captured in one still, tucked inside his pocket at all times. It’s this picture that he later shows Charles and texts to his mom and that definitely chokes up Rosa a little.

Amy keeps a copy framed on her desk, there’s another tacked onto the fridge with two heart-shaped magnets.

Twelve weeks. If he could unpick them, the way they are in his heart, he might do it like this:

kisses to Amy’s stomach every night before they go to sleep, because it’s exactly how he’ll be bidding their baby goodnight every evening in less than nine sweet months;

the glint in the eye of the saccharine elderly lady who runs their neighbourhood bodega when he tells her his wife is expecting and does she know any good remedies for morning sickness;

Amy’s head lolling over her crossword until it finally stills on his shoulder, because growing a baby is hard work, feeling her little huffs of breath even out until he gently displaces her into a good sleeping position;

weekly updates on Amy’s kitchen pad (‘week four: baby is the size of a poppyseed!’);

sharing illicit glances across the precinct when Amy’s carrying a well-placed file or Jake forgoes Rosa’s offer of coffee for herbal tea;

conspiring about ways they might tell the precinct - and especially Charles, who of course is none the wiser;

and of course, his favourite part of all: just the three of them, curled up in their apartment, Jake splayed out across the couch and Amy lounging on top of him, his nose buried in her inky hair. Maybe she’s talking over the Jeopardy contestants, or he’s trying to sway her towards putting Die Hard on again, but the end result is the same. Somehow he’s put together this life, this masterpiece, and the evidence is just love.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos & comments are fresh air during this quarantine hellscape <3  
> tumblr: @vic-kovac


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